The head of the Ministry of Agriculture reported on the preliminary results of the harvest. Alexander Tkachev noted that this year, for the first time in 15 years, the total sown area exceeded 80 million hectares. The positive dynamics of increasing the area of ​​cultivated agricultural land will continue in the future.

“The Ministry of Agriculture of Russia was cautious in assessing the final gross harvest due to adverse weather conditions in a number of regions, but today 85% of the sown area has been harvested and almost 122 million tons of grain in bunker weight have been harvested. We can say with confidence that a record harvest will be harvested, perhaps in the entire history of Russia and, of course, the Soviet Union. I want to remind you that we had a similar harvest in 1978 - this is 127 million tons, but this year we will beat this record, I have no doubt about it., - said Alexander Tkachev.

The Minister noted that there were no such indicators for the harvest in the entire history of the country. The grain harvest harvested this year will not only cover domestic needs for food and feed grains, but also ensure export supplies of Russian agricultural products.

In addition, the growth of the grain harvest is able to stimulate the development of animal husbandry within the country, by increasing the fodder base. Today, grain consumption for feed reaches 44 million tons, with the prospect of growing to 46 million tons by 2020.

Speaking about the dynamics of exports, Alexander Tkachev noted that to date, more than 10 million tons of grain have been exported, which is 34% more than the result of the same period last year. With a favorable situation on the world grain market, Russia plans to export about 45 million tons. Including the forecasted export of 30 million tons of wheat, which will allow the country to take a leading position in the export of this crop.

“To stimulate grain exports, the Ministry of Agriculture of Russia proposes to allocate 3 billion rubles to compensate for railway tariffs for the transportation of grain from regions remote from port transshipment - Siberia, the Urals, the Volga region and Central Russia. The relevant draft Government Decree has been prepared and is already being approved by the concerned authorities.”, - noted Alexander Tkachev.

Continuing the theme of record harvests, the head of the Ministry of Agriculture mentioned the high rates of sugar beet harvest - 52 million tons. Such a beet harvest will make it possible to fully provide Russian processing plants with raw materials and produce 6.5 million tons of sugar. As a result, the country will retain its leadership in the global sugar production market. The export potential of the industry this year is estimated at 700 thousand tons.

Good progress has been made in the harvesting of vegetable crops. To date, more than 2 million tons of vegetables have been harvested. The harvest of greenhouse vegetables is growing, the volume of harvested crops is 21% ahead of last year. It is planned to continue the positive dynamics through the construction of new greenhouse complexes and the laying of orchards.

“Summing up the results of this year's harvest, farmers are simultaneously laying the foundation for new records for the next harvesting season. The sowing campaign of winter crops has begun. More than 11 million hectares have already been sown, out of 17.5 million hectares allocated for winter crops.”- said Alexander Tkachev.

According to the head of the Ministry of Agriculture of Russia, the key to a good harvest lies in a combination of factors, namely, in the timely and full provision of plant protection products, fuel, and fertilizers. Purchases of fertilizers have increased by 10% to date.

The readiness of agricultural machinery will allow to complete seasonal field work in the optimal time. However, it is necessary to increase the pace of purchases of agricultural machinery, including by maintaining subsidies in this area.

At the end of his speech Alexander Tkachev on behalf of the agrarians of the country, he thanked the Government of the country, which creates all the necessary conditions for the effective implementation of seasonal field work. And the resulting record harvest is proof of that.

In turn, the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev highly appreciated the results of the harvesting campaign in the country.

“In general, the harvesting campaign is close to completion. In almost all areas there is a positive trend. And in some areas a record has been set. I consider the results of the harvesting campaign in 2017 to be very successful.”- said the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation.

The Prime Minister of Russia drew attention to the fact that, according to the order of the President of the country V.V. Putin, in the next three years, funding for agriculture will be increased by 20 billion rubles annually. This will ensure further growth of the country's agricultural sector.

22:30 - REGNUM

In Russia, a decrease in the grain harvest is predicted, but at the same time, the vegetable harvest will increase. Such a forecast was given by the director of the department of crop production of the Ministry of Agriculture of Russia Petr Chekmarev On July 18, at a meeting in the Stavropol Territory on the progress of the harvest in the country, a correspondent reports IA REGNUM from the meeting.

Svetlana Shapovalova © IA REGNUM

At the same time, the head of the Ministry of Agriculture Alexander Tkachev promised that the quality of grain would be no worse than in 2016. And in some areas it's even better. He called the standard situation in which in a number of areas the grain was harvested too wet, and it needs to be dried.

The minister noted that such problems arise constantly, and they are connected with "bungling" and omissions of business executives.

“In general, the situation is standard. Let's save the bread. The quality will be no worse than last year, and even better in some areas,” Tkachev said.

The course of harvesting gives reason to predict a decrease in the grain harvest to a level below 100 million tons, Petr Chekmarev said. In 2016, according to Rosstat, Russia harvested 119.129 million tons of grain and leguminous crops.

At the same time, he said that the vegetable harvest in Russia in 2017 is expected to be larger than last year. This applies to almost all types, except for potatoes, which will not be much less, but enough for the country, he stated.

The head of the department also confirmed that the North Caucasus region is seeing price increases for major crops, including potatoes, due to cold summers and late harvests. According to the presented graph, the price of potatoes has risen by almost 60%.

Petr Chekmarev drew attention to the lack of orchards in the south of Russia, and also called on Stavropol seed growers to more actively provide the country with seeds of corn, sunflower and other crops.

He said that Russia imports about 17 billion seeds from other countries, despite the fact that they grow in the Stavropol Territory. According to the calculations of the head of the department, at least 10 billion seeds can be produced by the Stavropol Territory.

The head of the department also named the Stavropol Territory among the regions best provided with harvesting equipment. On average, in Russia, one combine has to work on an area of ​​​​almost 90 hectares larger than the Stavropol one. In this regard, he recommended the region to consider the possibility of providing assistance with machinery in harvesting the central regions of the country.

Chekmarev stated that the gap in harvesting has decreased from the pace of 2016. If two weeks ago the gap was almost doubled, now it is 5 million tons.

As previously reported IA REGNUM, the head of the Ministry of Agriculture announced at the meeting that 19 million tons of grain have been harvested today, while in 2016 about 25 million tons were harvested by this date.

Experts attribute this to the cold summer of 2017 and bad weather, which negatively affected the harvest in many parts of the country.

Grain growers of the Kurgan region in 2017 grew a good harvest of grain and other crops. At the production sites of the Kurgan Research Institute of Agriculture, located in the central zone, the yield of Umka winter wheat was 42 centners per hectare, and Raduga spring wheat, a disease-tolerant variety, also exceeded 40 centners per hectare. A high yield is also ripening in most of the fields beyond the Urals. This was facilitated by favorable hydrothermal conditions (Table 1) and advanced cultivation technologies applied over large areas.

In all natural zones of the Kurgan region, the amount of precipitation from May to July exceeded the average annual norm by an average of 1.2 times. However, the temperature background in 2017 was much lower. Warm April gave way to cold May, which, against the background of high moisture supply, delayed the beginning of the sowing campaign, and later the vegetation of plants, especially in the northwestern zone. June pleased with warmth and productive rainfall, friendly shoots and good tillering of cereals, as a result, a high potential of the crop was laid. In July, the amount of precipitation was about 110% of the norm, which also favorably affected the growth and development of plants. At the same time, the average monthly temperature in July did not exceed 18.3-18.6°C, or 1-1.3°C below the climatic norm. This situation, against the background of increased moisture, led to an active growth of leafy mass, a delay in the vegetation of grain crops, disease damage, and intense heavy rains led to lodging of crops.

August turned out to be warm relative to the climatic norm, but in the 2nd decade the air temperature was 1.0°C below the norm. Precipitation of the first 2 decades (over 60 mm) exceeded the norm by 2 times and thus exacerbated the problem of lodging. As a result, under the conditions of the current year, in terms of ripening phases, spring wheat lags behind by 10-14 days compared to the average long-term periods, especially in fallow, well-fertilized with nitrogen and late-sown fields. The main harvesting dates may shift to September and October. The hot and dry 3rd decade of August will certainly accelerate the ripening of grain crops, but it is no longer necessary to rely only on direct combining, which has been used by the region's farms in recent years. The reason is that high-yielding crops have partially fallen, are lagging behind in maturation, and unfertilized and not treated with herbicides, are heavily littered with weeds.

Therefore, the quantity and quality of the harvested crop, its implementation and the financial condition of the economy will largely depend on the method of harvesting.
In modern agricultural production, the following main methods of harvesting are used:

Direct combining with grain headers, direct combining after desiccation;

Separate combining, combining with subsequent final drying of grain;

Direct combination with stripping headers.

Direct combining with grain headers

It is used in most cases on fields clear of weeds, in the absence of adjustment and lodging, as well as after desiccation of crops.

In the experiments of the Kurgan Research Institute of Agriculture in 2006-2008. desiccation of crops with glyphosate-containing herbicide hurricane forte two weeks before harvesting provided a significant reduction in the number and fresh weight of young and perennial weeds (Zamiatin, 2009). The maximum percentage of death and weight reduction of weeds was achieved using the herbicide Hurricane Forte at a dose of 3 l/ha, while the decrease in the number of young species reached 87%, perennials - 100%.

Structural analysis of the sheaves showed that the use of hurricane forte contributed to a decrease in moisture and weediness of the grain heap, while there was no decrease in the weight of 1000 grains and wheat yield (table 2).

The next year after chemical treatment, a positive aftereffect of desiccation was noted in the form of a significant reduction in the mass of perennial weeds on the herbicide-treated variants, especially with increased (2.25 l/ha) and maximum (3.0 l/ha) drug consumption rates. This also provided a significant increase in yield in the indicated variants.

However, it should be taken into account that the effectiveness of glyphosate as a desiccant depends much more strongly on meteorological conditions compared to preparations based on diquat (desiccants reglon, dry wind, and others). In cool rainy weather, glyphosate acts slowly, the physical drying of the wheat stalk (the process of drying the grain on the vine) takes a long time, especially if a third of the stalk of the crop is a crop lagging far behind in the maturation phase. Therefore, glyphosate desiccation should be considered more as a variant of summer-autumn chemical weeding on crops heavily infested with perennial weeds, especially field bindweed (Filippov and Nemchenko, 2017).

Thus, the use of herbicides during desiccation against perennial root weeds can significantly facilitate the harvesting of cereals and reduce the infestation of subsequent crops with overwintering weeds, which will significantly improve the conditions for a successful sowing campaign.

Separate combining

It should be used on high-yielding lolled massifs, clogged and late-ripening bread. This method allows you to start harvesting 10-15 days earlier than direct combining. It is possible to mow wheat into windrows at the beginning of the wax ripeness of the grain. For simultaneous and accelerated ripening of grain in rolls to full ripeness, this work is carried out in a short time.

Basic requirements for mowing.

High-yielding and laid down grains must be mowed with a reduction in the header swath width to 3-4 m, which will ensure a smaller swath thickness and speed up its drying.

The cut stems should be laid in well-formed swaths at an angle of 10-30o. The failure of the mowed mass to the ground is undesirable, so the height of the stubble should correspond to the power of the swath.

When harvesting in wet conditions, the header skid shoes should be fitted with polyethylene pads to ensure good glide.

When mowing a laid down crop, the harvester must be equipped with a crop lifter and an eccentric reel, while the reel bars are removed, and the tines tilt back in the direction of the combine by 10-30o. The reel is carried forward and lowered to the lowest position, provided that the ends of the fingers do not fall into the cutting unit.

Pickup adjustment. The height of the pick-up mechanism is set in such a way that the swath is picked up without loss, and the pick-up fingers work at the very surface of the soil.

The speed of the pick-up shaft must ensure a uniform supply of the mass to the threshing unit (the swath must not pile up or break).

Unfortunately, most farms do not have harvesters for mowing the grain mass and pick-ups for threshing windrows. According to the Department of Agro-Industrial Complex of the Kurgan Region, as of August 1, the availability of mechanisms for separate harvesting (reapers of various modifications and pick-ups) in the region is no more than 30%.

At present, trailed harvesters ZhVP-9.1, "Businessman", "Maria", Don Mart and others are widely used for mowing.

If there are hay-harvesting equipment on the farm, in particular mower-conditioners, they should first of all be used on lodged massifs with the conditioner turned off.

Direct combining with final drying of grain

Farms with sorting and drying equipment can be used.

However, it should be noted that direct combining with final drying is the most costly method (Table 3).

In some farms, there are areas for direct combining stripping headers, which are most widely used in the regions of Kazakhstan. Their advantage over traditional ones lies in minimizing losses and low damage to grain, the possibility of threshing grain with high moisture content (up to 30%), increasing the total duration of use in the harvesting campaign, and, which is especially important in dry conditions, leaving high stubble that protects the soil from evaporation after harvesting, contributes to the retention of snow cover and the accumulation of productive moisture in the autumn-winter period. The yield of barley after harvesting with a stripping header increased compared to the traditional one by 3 c/ha, the speed of the combine from 5-6 to 8-9 km/h (Latyshev, 2015). According to the research results of G.E. Chepurina (2015), stripping headers of both foreign and domestic production increase the productivity of combines of 3-4 classes by 30-100%.

With all the advantages of such headers, it is important to remember that spike and panicle crops are best suited for noiling, that is, those in which the inflorescences of plants are compact and located at the end of the upper part of the stem. In production, there is a positive experience of harvesting flax and rapeseed by the method of tow, but this requires additional technical improvement, taking into account the characteristics of the harvested crops.

It is undesirable to use such headers as pick-ups. The fact is that the throughput capacity of stripping headers for a heap laid in a swath is many times greater than the throughput capacity of the feeder house and threshing apparatus, which can lead to an increase in mechanical load and destruction of the combine harvester metal structures (Shvartsman, 2013).

In addition, it must be understood that if the field is littered with weeds, the header will also comb the weeds, which will certainly increase the humidity and weediness of the heap, as in classic combining.

Summing up the above, it should be noted that, under favorable weather conditions, the most accessible and cheapest way to harvest laid and weedy grain arrays is separate harvesting, which, in terms of costs, approaches direct combining without drying the grain. Desiccation of crops is an effective but expensive technique. The use of desiccants is cost-effective when wheat yields are over 20 q/ha.

In the conditions of this year there will be a problem with harvesting straw.

Most harvesters are equipped with choppers, but they do not solve the problem of uniform distribution of chopped straw over the field when harvesting high-stem crops.

To perform this work, wide-spring harrows of the BSP-21 Brigantina type and other domestic and foreign analogues are needed.

When harvesting with combine harvesters without choppers, it is necessary to organize straw slagging and storage; burning is not allowed due to the high fire hazard and the destruction of straw as the main source of soil replenishment with organic matter.

References:

1. Zamyatin A.A. Efficiency of different periods of herbicide application on grain crops in the southern forest-steppe of the Trans-Urals. Abstract dis...cand. s.-x. Sciences: Kurgan, 2009. 17 p.

2. Filippov A.S., Nemchenko V.V. Technologies for the use of herbicides on grain crops under conditions of minimizing tillage. Kurtamysh: Kurtamysh Printing House LLC, 2016, pp. 61-72.

3. Latyshev N.N. Fascination with comb // Agrarian sector. 2015. №3. pp. 24-27.

4. Chepurin G.E. Method for selecting the type of equipment for grain harvesting, taking into account zonal features // Bulletin of the State Agrarian University of the Northern Trans-Urals. 2015. No. 2 (29). pp. 68-75.

I.N. Tsymbalenko, S.D. Gilev, N.V. steppe,
E.V. Nesterova, V.A. Berdyugin
FGBNU "Kurgan Research Institute of Agriculture"
[email protected]
Magazine "Fields of Russia" No. 8 (152), September 2017

The Ministry of Agriculture raised its forecast for the gross grain harvest this year to 127 million tons, acknowledging that the harvest could beat the Soviet-era record. According to the head of the ministry, Alexander Tkachev, until recently, the department was cautious in its assessments due to adverse weather conditions in a number of regions:

“But today, 85% of the sown area has already been harvested, almost 122 million tons have been harvested in bunker weight. And we can say with confidence that a record harvest will be harvested, perhaps in the entire history of Russia - and, of course, the Soviet Union, ”

On September 23, President Vladimir Putin announced that "it looks like there will be a record harvest again." Tkachev, in turn, recalled that at the moment the record in Russia was recorded in 1978, when 127 million tons were harvested. (excluding Crimea).

“This year we will beat this record, I have no doubt,”

The minister expressed his confidence.

According to Tkachev, 40-45 million tons will be sent for export this season. To date, exports have already exceeded last year by a third: more than 10 million tons of grain have been shipped, including almost 8 million tons of wheat.

“In a favorable situation on the world market, we plan to export almost 45 million tons, including 30 million tons of wheat. We hope that this year Russia will once again become the world leader in wheat exports,”

Tkachev emphasized.

Grain market experts predicted that the grain harvest this year could exceed the level of last year (120.7 million tons) back in mid-July, when the estimates of the Ministry of Agriculture were at the level of 100-105 million tons. grow sharply and now exceed 130 million tons. Thus, over the past week, the analytical company ProZerno increased its forecast by another 2 million tons to 134.1 million tons, including 81.9 million tons of wheat (in 2016 - 73.3 million tons), 20.3 million tons of barley and 16 million tons of corn, and the analytical center "Rusagrotrans" - by 1 million tons to 133.3 million tons, including 82.3 million tons of wheat. The forecast of the analytical center "SovEcon" - 133 million tons, the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies (IKAR) - 131-134 million tons.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, as of September 28, 123.4 million tons of grain and leguminous crops were threshed in bunker weight, which, taking into account 5% refraction, means about 117 million tons in net weight. Harvesting has been completed on 86% of the area, the average yield is 30.4 centners per hectare against 26.1 centners per hectare on the same date in 2016. Including wheat, which has already been threshed from 91% of the country's area, the yield exceeds last year's figure by 17%, barley, harvested by 93%, by 20%. So far, corn has been harvested from just over a quarter of the area, its yield is now lower than last year by 8% and is 48 centners per hectare.

Transportation compensation

To stimulate grain exports, the Ministry of Agriculture proposes this year to subsidize rail transport of grain for export from remote regions. According to Tkachev, the corresponding draft resolution has been prepared and the money for this purpose has already been found:

“It (the draft resolution) is being coordinated with the authorities concerned,”

After the government meeting, the minister confirmed to journalists that the subsidizing of transportation is planned to start in October. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, 3 billion rubles are needed to compensate for export transportation, which, as previously reported, will allow exporting about 3 million tons of grain from Siberia, the Urals, the Volga region, and the center of Russia.

“Taking into account the lack of demand for grain in these regions, the price was always underestimated by a ruble or two, and this made grain production not very efficient, not very profitable in these territories, and this is nothing less than about 70% of the volume of grain produced in remote areas. from the center and southern ports territories",

The official noted quote by RNS).

Including thanks to grain exports of agricultural products by the end of 2017 can grow to $20 billion.

“Last year, it amounted to $17 billion. That is, this is a significant increase, and this indicates our export potential not only for grain, but also for meat, vegetable oil, and sugar,”

Summed up Tkachev.

The new price stabilization mechanism proposed by the Ministry of Agriculture looks more reasonable than interventional grain purchases, Andrey Sizov, director of the SovEcon analytical center, said earlier. At the same time, according to him, Russian ports are already fully loaded:

“Exports are now going as fast as possible. And even if we ship for free, there will be no more ports from this. Therefore, in the short term - in the coming weeks, or even months - with the help of such a mechanism, it will not be possible to remove grain from the market,”

The fact that the infrastructure is operating at full capacity and therefore it will be extremely difficult to increase exports, Vladimir Petrichenko, general director of the analytical company ProZerno, also agrees. However, according to him, the zeroing of duties is likely to lift falling grain prices:

“To what extent, it is still difficult to say. However, this will not relieve the tension on the offer of grain: they will not export more, even if it is cheaper,”

Earlier, the Board of Russian Railways, for its part, decided to establish a discount of 10.3% on tariffs for export transportation of grain from a number of regions to Russian ports. The reduction factor will apply to transportation from the Voronezh, Orel, Tambov, Orenburg, Saratov, Novosibirsk, Omsk regions from October 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018. It will cover the transportation of wheat, rye, oats, barley, corn, rice, buckwheat, beans, peas, beans and other grain cargoes. In addition, on September 15, the government approved the rules for subsidizing the costs of transporting agricultural products from the central regions of Russia to Siberia and the Far East. As Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich stated, compensation for part of the logistics export costs will first work as a pilot project: in 2017, the mechanism will be tested on individual companies, “and next year there is an opportunity to deploy it fully.”

Wheat quality improved this season

According to the Federal Center for Assessing the Safety and Quality of Grain, 39.9 million tons of grain and leguminous crops have been threshed to date in bunker weight, which is 41.5% of the gross harvest in 47 regions. The share of food wheat by September 21 was 68.2% (23.2 million tons), including 21.8% for grade 3 wheat and 0.1% for grade 2 wheat.

“In general, the quality of the classes is better than last year,”

The director of the Federal State Budgetary Institution "Center for Grain Quality Assessment" Yulia Koroleva stated at the VI industry business conference Russian Crop Production - 2017/18.

Taking into account the fact that harvesting continues in Siberia and the Volga region, by the end of the harvesting campaign, the percentage of wheat of the 3rd class will remain higher than last year and may amount to 25% of the total harvest.

"Last year, 3rd grade, we had no more than 22%",

She reminded.

Thus, in the Krasnodar Territory, the 3rd grade accounts for 14.9% of the crop, which is almost twice as high as last year's figure (7.9%), in the Crimea - 9.1% against 5.4% in 2016.

Analytical center "SovEcon" predicts the final share of wheat of the 3rd class this season is slightly lower - at the level of 23-23.5%. However, taking into account the expected record harvest, the “increase” in the volume of wheat of the 3rd class compared to last year will be significant and may amount to 3 million tons.

“With a forecasted wheat harvest of 83 million tons, the volume of wheat of the 3rd class can be 19-19.5 million tons against the estimated 16.3 million tons,”

It is said in the message "SovEkon".

Also, improvements in performance compared to last year can be expected for wheat of the 2nd class.

“Now a small amount of the second class has been identified - about 0.1% of the total gross collection. But we understand that now Siberia, the Volga Federal District will give a noticeable increase in quality”,

The Queen noted.

According to the Center for Grain Quality Assessment, by mid-September, the 2nd class was detected in the Tula region (1.2%), the Tambov region (0.7%), the Stavropol Territory (0.2%), the Ulyanovsk region (0.14% ) and the Krasnodar Territory (0.08%).

“There is no second class in Siberia yet, but I think it will be. We expect,

The Queen expressed her hopes.

In general, in the Volga region, wheat of the 3rd class accounted for 24%, 4th - 32%, 5th - 44%; in Siberia - 59%, 29% and 12% respectively. In the Southern Federal District, the share of food wheat was 72%, the North Caucasus - 89%, the Central - 57%, the North-Western - 94%, the Urals - 46%, the Far East - 2%.

“As for the grain damaged by the turtle bug, we have better grain quality than before. Now such cases have been detected mainly only in the Center and in the South, and this figure is still much lower than last year. The only thing I would like to say is that maybe these indicators will change. Although this is not expected in Siberia, it will also be quite clean in the Volga region, ”

The Queen counts.

As for the quality of exported wheat, at the beginning of the 2017/18 season, the export structure changed somewhat.

“Less is shipped for export of wheat of the 3rd class - less than 6%”,

The Queen pointed out.

In the same period of the last agricultural year, this figure was twice as high - 14.2%. At the same time, in July-August, the share of exports of wheat of the 4th grade increased from 83.1% to 84.5%. Among the exported wheat, the 5th grade in July-August accounted for 9.7% (in 2016 - 2.7%).

“If Egypt traditionally buys the 4th grade, then Turkey has reduced the quality of the purchased grain: there was a change in favor of increasing the 5th grade to 37%, while it became slightly less than the 3rd grade - 17.5. The average share of protein in exported wheat in the first two months of the 2017/18 season was 12.3%.

The Queen explained.

As the head of the Ministry of Economic Development Maxim Oreshkin reported to the President, now there are “just perfect weather conditions for harvesting”:

“And the yield is at a level higher than last year, and the number of losses has also seriously decreased.”

The Ministry of Agriculture gives a disappointing forecast for the 2018 harvest

At present, the laying of the future crop is underway, and today the forecast for the next year is disappointing, said Petr Chekmarev, Director of the Crop Production Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, at the VI industry business conference Russian Crop Production - 2017/18:

“With winter crops, sowing was delayed until autumn - in the Volga region, in the Central Federal District, although now they managed to catch up due to the south. There is a delay in harvesting - plowing, tillage is delayed, which is also not a plus, ”

In addition, according to the head of the department of crop production, the weather this year is not conducive to a high harvest in 2018.

“Due to the rains this year, nutrients were washed away, the temperature is dropping, microbiological processes in the soil are weaker. Therefore, the fertile part next year will not be quite pleasant for the next harvest, ”

He noted.

At the same time, he recalled that crop failures often occur after seasons with a high gross yield.

“And next year doesn’t bode well for a good harvest yet, so this year we need to have stocks for next year,”

Chekmarev concluded.

According to the latest data from the Ministry of Agriculture, by September 21, winter crops were sown on an area of ​​10.0 million hectares, or 57.5% of the projected area (in 2016 - 10.1 million hectares). Harvesting of grain and leguminous crops has been completed on 80.9% of the sown area, 117.7 million tons of grain in bunker weight have been harvested with a yield of 30.9 centners per hectare (in 2016 - 26.5 centners per hectare).

As Chekmarev noted, the harvesting campaign is currently underway in difficult weather conditions:

“It's raining, especially in Siberia, where harvesting is going badly. In the Northwestern Federal District, the situation is also not very good. Well, in the near future they promise snow in these regions, this also complicates the situation in harvesting,”

In addition, in his opinion, one should not expect a high harvest this year for corn, which is currently harvested on 19% of the area:

“The corn let us down this year because there was not enough heat for the corn to form a good yield, despite the fact that there were very good varieties,”

In 2016, according to Rosstat, the corn harvest reached a record high of 15.3 million tons.

In Russia, 69% of arable land is used

In Russia, on average, 69% of arable land resources are exploited, while in the world, the average use of arable land is 80%, said the head of the Center for Economic Forecasting of Gazprombank Daria Snitko at the VI industry business conference Russian Crop Production - 2017/18:

“In key regions where Russian arable land is concentrated, the picture is very uneven. A number of regions, in principle, have already reached a fairly high level of arable land use. For example, the Altai Territory, the Rostov Region and, of course, the Krasnodar Territory. There are even such precedents that show that the area of ​​sown arable land is greater than the rewritten resources of arable land.

Thus, 98% of arable resources are sown in the Krasnodar Territory, 91% in Tatarstan, 88% in Bashkiria, and 83% in Altai Territory.

According to Snitko, in Russia, the area of ​​arable land in most regions was declining until 2007, when the minimum was passed:

“After that, the area gradually began to grow.”

Despite this, only three regions by 2016 managed to increase the area under crops to the level of 1995 - the Amur and Kursk regions, as well as Adygea.

“At the same time, six regions were found where arable land has been falling since 1990 and is still falling. These are the Arkhangelsk, Yaroslavl, Tver regions, Udmurtia, Buryatia and the Trans-Baikal Territory,

Snitko reported.

The leaders in terms of the volume of unused arable land are the Volgograd region, where almost 2.8 million hectares of arable resources are not sown, the Saratov region (2 million hectares) and the Orenburg region (1.8 million hectares). In general, the Southern Volga region today, according to Snitko, has the greatest potential for investment in the crop sector: the return potential of arable land is estimated at more than 7.5 million hectares. At the same time, the logistics capabilities of the Volga River can be used to export products, and integration with the agricultural sector of Kazakhstan also has an export potential, the expert noted. Also, the expert believes, in the near future investors will be interested in the northwestern part of Russia - first of all, for the development of the dairy sector and organic farming.

“In my opinion, among the regions that will be of interest for investments in the crop sector in the near future are the Orenburg and Saratov regions, the Altai Territory, the Tula and Moscow regions, the Yaroslavl region and, perhaps, some regions of the Far East. Firstly, these regions have recently burst into the ranks of the best regions in terms of investment climate, and especially the Moscow and Yaroslavl regions should be noted here. In addition, these regions have a fairly good financial situation,”

Snitko noted.

The price of land for agricultural production in the country, according to the Center for Economic Forecasting of Gazprombank, ranges from $ 1.5-2 thousand / ha in the best regions to $ 200-500 / ha in more arid areas.

The total area of ​​unused agricultural land in the country is estimated at 40 million hectares. In July 2016, a federal law came into force in Russia that improved the land acquisition procedure. In particular, the period after which a land plot can be withdrawn from the owner if it is not used for agricultural production has been reduced from five to three years. The withdrawal procedure is initiated by the Rosselkhoznadzor, which transfers the materials to the regional executive authorities, and they must apply to the court within a month with a request to withdraw the land plot and sell it at public auction. As Head of the Ministry of Agriculture Alexander Tkachev reported earlier, at the end of 2016, decisions were made to withdraw 10 thousand hectares of unused land - four times more than in 2015. The region with the largest amount of seized land turned out to be the Moscow region - here the owners lost 2.58 thousand hectares of unused land.

The agricultural sector of the country's economy in August 2017 overcame a temporary recession in June-July, caused by low harvesting rates due to poor climatic conditions in spring and early summer. Agricultural production again went up (104.7% against August last year). Also, a distinctive feature of the year is still a small but stable increase in milk production.

This year we are again waiting for a record harvest of grain. As of September 29, more than 123 million tons of grain were harvested, which significantly exceeds the record figures of last year.

The share of processing enterprises is growing, which already account for more than half of the commissioned capacities. In July-September 2017, 32 new or reconstructed enterprises were put into operation with an investment volume of more than 100 million rubles, including 17 enterprises for processing agricultural raw materials.

The review includes 13 enterprises with investments of more than 500 million rubles, including 7 enterprises in which investments amounted to more than 1 billion rubles.

1. On July 21, Agroholding DolgovGroup launched a plant for the production of animal feed in Guryevsk, Kaliningrad Region. It is the largest feed mill in the region. The capacity of the plant is 480 tons of feed per day or 150 thousand tons of products per year. The production is fully automated and managed by only seven specialists. Investments in the project amounted to 1.2 billion rubles. Sberbank provided a significant part of the funds as a loan. The plant was built in 2 years on the territory of a poultry farm in Guryevsk. This is the third feed mill of the company. With the launch of the plant, the needs of the agricultural holding's subdivisions for compound feed will be completely covered. And this is more than 12 thousand cattle of dairy and meat breeds of the Nezhinskaya dairy factory, and also more than 800 thousand chickens at the poultry farm in Guryevsk.

2. On July 21, Miratorg Agro-Industrial Holding put into operation a beef cattle farm for 5.5 thousand heads in the Tula Region.

The volume of investments in new production amounted to 900 million rubles.

Aberdeen Angus cows will be raised at the farm, located in the village of Lenino, Odoevsky District.

3. On July 24, in the village of Chaplygino, Kursk district, Kursk region, the opening of the Mushroom Rainbow enterprise, a mushroom production greenhouse complex, took place. The company invested 1.2 billion rubles in the project. 248 jobs will be created here. The first stage of production allows growing up to 4 thousand tons of champignons per year. In the next two years, investors plan to implement the import-substituting project in full, which will triple the production capacity - up to 12,000 tons of champignons per year.

4. July 26 in with. Sagittarius of the Tambov district of the Tambov region opened a meat processing workshop of the Auchan-Russia company. Investments in the project amounted to more than 3 billion rubles. In 2018, the enterprise will produce up to 40 thousand tons of meat products from pork, beef, lamb. By 2021, it is planned to increase the capacity to 70 thousand tons. Now Auchan supplies about 35 thousand tons of these types of meat per year for sale.

Raw materials will be purchased not only from agricultural enterprises, but also from Tambov farmers. They will sign long-term contracts. This will allow Auchan to completely switch to Russian meat in 3-4 years, abandoning imported meat.

At the first stage of the project implementation, 200 jobs were created. After reaching full capacity, more than 1,000 jobs will appear. The average salary will be more than 30 thousand rubles.

5. August 28 in with. First Zaseymye, Manturovsky district, Kursk region, opened a new pig farm. The cost of this project is more than 1 billion rubles.

The new pig complex-reproducer, built by BVK-GLOBAL LLC, is designed for 5,500 sows at a time.

Thanks to the introduced pig-breeding facility, more than 100 jobs will be created.

6. On August 30, a fruit storage facility was opened in the Abinsky district of the Krasnodar Territory. The one-time capacity of the complex for storage, sorting, packaging and commercial processing of fruits is 6800 tons.

It provides for a modern sorting line for apples and two packing lines, each with a capacity of 10-12 tons / hour.

The volume of investments will amount to 650 million rubles.

7. On September 4, in the Belgorod region near Prokhorovka, a workshop for the production of curd cheeses was opened at the plant of the Hochland Russland company.

The production capacity has been doubled - up to 40 thousand tons per year.

In 2017, Russia broke the record for the grain harvest - more than 122.5 million tons have already been harvested. This was announced by the Prime Minister of Russia D mitri medvedev at the last government meeting. There was a similar harvest in 1978 - then this figure was 127 million tons, but the area of ​​land under grain crops was then 78 million hectares, and today - only 47.

— This year's harvest can be called a record one in the history of Russia and the Soviet Union. If we restore this area, we will receive an additional 100 million tons of grain. This is about the potential of the grain market. By 2030, we can get not 120, but 150 million tons, and exports will not be 40-45, as today, but already for 70 million. Such a harvest will fully meet the growing demand for food and feed grains in the domestic market, as well as ensure export deliveries, - the Minister of Agriculture of the Russian Federation noted at the meeting Alexander Tkachev.

According to him, already now there is a return on the colossal funds that we invest in agriculture. This year it is 242 billion rubles, which are directed to the implementation of the state program for the development of agriculture.

What problems might arise?

However, a good harvest creates certain problems for farmers. As noted by the owner of the Sverdlovsk network of private bakeries "On Vishneva" Anatoly Pavlov, the purchase of grain is now at low prices.

The story is very long and the peasants are in a panic. Harvest from the field can be sold at 5,000 rubles per ton, for comparison - in May, the cost of grain was 11,500 rubles per ton, however, from a warehouse. At the same time, the cost of materials spent on sowing grain is 4,500 rubles. per ton. Although bakers will benefit - flour prices also fell by 1,500 rubles in three weeks, but these fluctuations can be attributed to seasonal factors, February is an indicative month, - Anatoly Pavlov told OG.

This is due to the fall in purchase prices for grain and the loading of elevators, which until recently stored the harvest of previous years. The situation required the direct intervention of the Russian Government, which allocated subsidies for the transportation of grain from remote areas of Altai and Siberia to the terminals of the Novorossiysk port. Despite the fact that over the past three years, port workers have managed to double the volume of grain transshipment, the capacities are overloaded, and the reserves for increasing the volumes are low.

What to do?

The situation in the future may be changed by the construction of the railway part of the Crimean bridge, the completion of which is scheduled for December 2019. There are three deep-sea terminals in Crimea capable of handling grain. Now this infrastructure is not used due to the blockade of the Crimea - grain is not supplied from Ukraine. There is no possibility to transport grain from Russia either.

Secondly, it is necessary to speed up work on the creation of new wholesale and logistics centers. This will reduce losses during transportation, which reach 30 percent. The Ministry of Agriculture plans to build near million-plus cities and large transport and logistics hubs, such as Moscow and the Moscow region, the Leningrad region and St. Petersburg, Rostov, Sverdlovsk and others. The centers will be tied into a single network that will allow tracking and regulating the flow of goods between the federal districts of the country. The program started in 2014, and some of the facilities, for example, in Primorye, have already been put into operation. However, their number is not enough - this is the only way to explain the proposal of the head of the agro-industrial complex Alexander Tkachev about plans to build an additional 36 centers.

And lastly, as Dmitry Medvedev noted, it is necessary to increase the processing of grain into a product with a higher value added.

By and large, we have no other choice. Part of the funds allocated for grain interventions and subsidies for the transportation of grain, it makes sense to invest in the creation of a network of plants for deep processing of wheat in the Altai, Western and Eastern Siberia. This will allow creating a product of higher processing and solving logistics problems. At the same time, added value will remain in the country and new jobs will be created. A similar plant was built in Ishim (Tyumen region). Investments amounted to 5 billion rubles, and the processing capacity is 120 thousand tons of wheat per year. The final product of processing is alcohol, compound feed and lysine, which will be imported to the countries of the Middle East and Asia (Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan). The payback period of investments is 7 years.

But there are not enough new deep processing plants, the director of the Finagro company believes Evgeny Shestakov:“This is a very expensive production and there are no analogues to the Ishim Lisine Plant in the immediate vicinity. In our region, unfortunately, there are no grain consumers of this level, and we can only count on the Sverdlovsk poultry farm, which buys part of the grown crop from local producers. This makes it necessary to export grain to neighboring regions. The strategic mistake is to increase production in the absence of markets. One can understand the southern regions of the country, which are able to export large volumes of products, taking advantage of the proximity of the port infrastructure.”

About 6 trillion rubles are needed for the planned state program for the construction of 100-120 deep processing plants with a capacity of 20 million tons of grain. After the launch of these plants, stable demand for grain in the domestic market will increase. At the same time, each plant, purchasing grain worth 1 billion rubles annually, will be able to produce products worth 5 billion rubles. Only planning the demand for grain with the help of its deep processing can smooth out seasonal price fluctuations and give farmers confidence in the future.

By the way

Despite the worsening weather conditions, field work continues everywhere in the Sverdlovsk region, this was stated by acting. Minister of Agroindustrial Complex and Food of the Region Dmitry Degtyarev. At the moment, Sverdlovsk agrarians have finished harvesting fodder crops for livestock needs. Collected 31.3 centners of feed per animal, with a plan of 30 centners. Also, grain crops were harvested from the fields 92 percent of the plan, the gross grain harvest amounted to 755 thousand tons. More than 90 percent of the plan has been harvested potatoes, 215,000 tons of tubers have been stored, and according to the plan, 218,000 tons are to be harvested. Also, 61 percent of the vegetable harvest was harvested from the fields of the region.

• Published in No. 186 dated October 6, 2017